WRITING: A CAREER, AN ART FORM, A SUPERPOWER

Writing as a career is hard for many to swallow. With the platforms that have been up and coming through the past years access to full-time writing career is not out of the ordinary, but the investment into an individual’s bank account is still not the steep price that many influential bloggers make it out to be.

Many people in my life look at me with skepticism when I tell them my dream of being an author. None were more surprised than some of my own family members when I told them that I was also thinking of doing YouTube as well.

The people surrounding me always warned me to be smart and to have a main plan and keep the writing as a backup. I am not denying the fact that it will take a lot of work, effort, time and sleepless nights. No one has gotten to be where they are in life without some hard work, sweat and a few tears of relief and exhaustion on some level.

Writing has always been the go-to answer of what I wanted to be when I grew up since fourth grade. It had never changed once nor do I plan on changing it. Writing was a form of communication in which I was able to excel. I had never felt comfortable with socialization in any age-range for multiple reasons not the least of which is perception.

The world has many perceptions and assumptions of people and many things can influence these: culture, societal norms, and personal beliefs.

Writing has stood the test of time in artistic medium that has been through all generations and have been used as powerful tools. With the added use of technology writing can now be more widespread. This medium is a source for people who do not feel like the physical manifestation of their voice is not enough.

Maybe sometimes it is not.

Writing is not something that can be taken back. We can edit and reshape, but the final product that we publish or press the post button is now final. What we have said is now out in the universe and people now see it and read it.

It is now a part of our history that people can look back on and see. Future generations will see these works and they will see the history that we allow them. History has been recorded by humans. We all have contributed to history in one form or another. Whatever we write will be what the future generations read, analyze, and learn from.

So what are we contributing?

If you live in America as I do we have a beautiful freedom called freedom of speech. It allows us to say or write anything that we think, feel, and believe. It allows us to share our voice not just for this generation to see but those that follow. They will read and they will determine what they will and whether they choose to agree or not.

Writing is not supposed to be a source of contention. It is meant to release all of our emotion, focus our thoughts, feel what has made us numb, share what has given us hope, to breathe when it feels like we were slowly drowning with no way to break through the top of the water, and just sharing what is in our head.

It will not always be understood. It will not always be accepted.

It is a source of growth and leading yourself as an individual to explore what is in your mind in the way that you see it. In this you can see magic, winged creatures, scary beasts, bad-ass warriors and epic battles.

There are also serene locations that allow you to breathe and just listen, there is light banter that makes you cringe when you are reminded of a younger you, and there is also a place where we drown in the lake of our own tears and suffering.

No matter what we read or write we feel for character who we most relate to, we rage at those that deserve our anger, we cry when a point hits to close to home and we smile when we get a moment where a character gets something nice.

Writing can make us feel emotions that we didn’t even know we needed to feel.

It is not as rare as one may think when you read a scenario of a character and it brings up a long-buried emotion in you. The most reflective of moments come when you are least expecting of them. Reading just happens to be one of those moments in most cases.

Writing can also teach us.

It does not have to be in the form of an actual moral, historical element, or real-life scenario that is blatantly obvious. There is just a natural outcome that comes with watching, reading and learning about certain characteristics and how you can incorporate them into your life.

In many ways, writing can be a saving grace to people and for me it was. I have melded my love of writing and getting lost to another world where I do not even have to think and just watch my hands racing across the keyboard, with that of storytelling through the camera to create a life I enjoy thoroughly.

The act of writing allows me to get into the mind of another person when it becomes too much to be in my own mind. The creating the story of through the use of my YouTube videos gives me a way to be back in the world and to remind myself what I want to accomplish through the use of creating a story both on paper and the screen.

Writing has saved my life in many ways and really did at a time when I found no worth in myself physically, mentally, or emotionally. There was a time when I did not think I had any worth or purpose in the world. That day I had two letters written in my hand. One was a letter to death. I do not think death as a person, but there was a heavy presence when you start to personalize a conceptual reality. I wanted to feel that presence because I did not feel anything else. The other note was written to a dead friend who had always been there for me and encouraged me to be my best.

I had asked her if she could see me now and wondered what she would have said if she were here. I then proceeded to think about how I would be different if she were.

I then sat down and wrote everything I was feeling in a prose format.

My friend asked me what I was writing. I showed her and she said it was beautifully written. I responded by then asking if she was serious. She looked at me as if I had grown a second head and said in not as many words that she would never bullshit me about reading as she hated reading.

It made me feel something that I had not felt in a while. Joy.

This feeling grew every time I wrote and shared a piece with her. She would always let me know what she would add or change. It was something that I grew to have pride in as well. She was not the only one who had read my writings and has given back positive encouragement.

Finally something I was good at.

In this I knew that I was able to contribute something to the world. I was a shy kid and spent most of my time watching the world rather than living in it. I have spent more time nowadays to live in the moment and be present as it is a gift and I do not want to waste a second.

High school was the year in which I wrote down observations in the form of short stories. I had been able to then take college writing classes and had some amazing feedback that was able to grow me both as a writer and a person, for which I will be forever grateful.

Writing saved my life, writing made the observations which I had seen more relatable because no one saw the age of the person rather what they had to say, writing made my vocabulary all the more eloquent when in reality it is hard for me to make eye contact and to adequately present myself in any way similar.

Writing became a super power.

One of my bigger observations of the world is that each individual is a star of their own movie or the hero in their own book as they go through life; writing allows me to be my own hero. In my own book of life I do not ever feel as if I am the main protagonist other than when I can get behind a computer screen and let my hands fly across the keys.

This is what writing has done for me and I could not be more grateful or thankful. On this platform I would love to spread the spotlight on other amazing works of art (theater, movies, and books) but in this I wanted to spread the spotlight on the medium that makes a lot of these arts possible: writing.

I hope that you enjoyed hearing what had started my journey here on Vocal, YouTube, and just every aspect of life in general. I will leave all of the links to my platforms so you can see exactly how I have been using my writing in a 'professional' format.

Babbling Bumbling Booknerd

Bookstagram: babbling_bumbling_booknerd

Medium: https://medium.com/@mayavictoriahernandez